field holler

field holler noun: a slow, introspective African-American song type that has its origin in solo work songs, featuring a meandering melody, irregular rhythms, and various forms of wordless vocalization.

Noun

field holler (plural field hollers)

A slow, introspective African-American song type that has its origin in solo work songs, featuring a meandering melody, irregular rhythms, and various forms of wordless vocalization.
- They made up field hollers with long, sad, wailing blue notes in their voices that said how tired a man can be.1954, Langston Hughes, The First Book of Jazz, New York: Franklin Watts, published 1955, page 9
- The emergence of classic blues indicated that many changes had taken place in the Negro. His sense of place, or status, within the superstructure of American society had changed radically since the days of the field holler.1963, Amiri Baraka, chapter 7, in Blues People: Negro Music in White America, New York: Morrow, page 87
Synonyms:

arwhoolie, cornfield holler, field blues, field cry, field shout, holler

Examples of field holler in a sentence

I would open my mouth, and screams, shouts and field hollers would tear out my tongue in their rush to be free.1976, Maya Angelou, chapter 3, in Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry like Christmas, New York: Bantam, published 1977, page 28:
[…] she moans the remaining lines unhurriedly and with staggering self-possession, stretching out the vowels as if intoning a field holler.2005, Bill Friskics-Warren, “Transcendental Blues: Bettye LaVette has found her joy—and maybe, at last, an audience the size of her voice”...

Synonyms of field holler

arwhoolie
cornfield holler
field blues
field cry
field shout
holler

Forms of field holler

plural	field hollers

Questions about field holler

What does field holler mean?: Field holler means a slow, introspective African-American song type that has its origin in solo work songs, featuring a meandering melody, irregular rhythms, and various forms of wordless vocalization.
How do you use field holler in a sentence?: I would open my mouth, and screams, shouts and field hollers would tear out my tongue in their rush to be free.
What part of speech is field holler?: Field holler is a noun.
What is the plural of field holler?: The plural of field holler is field hollers.

Words near field holler in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: field holler (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “field holler.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/field_holler. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.